Belt drive question

[BobT]

I own a 1999 Kawasaki Prairie 300. When my brother-in-law bought his 2001 Suzuki Quad we noticed a feature he had that was quite nice. Since then I have noticed the same feature on Can-Am and Polaris and I am wondering if perhaps there is something wrong with mine or not.

When I traverse down steep hills, I am forced to ride my brakes because with my machine idling and the effect of gravity, the clutches disengage from the drive belt and my wheeler is free to coast down the grade. His Quad and his Can-Am both will not do this nor does a friend's Polaris. Their machines are able to use the engine idle to control their downhill speed. In fact they rarely if ever need to apply their brakes no matter how steep the grade.

First, is there something wrong with my clutches? Perhaps the technology wasn't available for my 1999 300 and this is normal for that model.

Second, how do they do that with the belt drives? How can they idle in gear but yet the wheeler won't freely coast down hill?

Thanks,

Bob

[Black_Bay]

It's called engine braking. In fact Polaris called it EBS for engine braking system. All the newer automatic models have it. Nothing is wrong with yours, it acts just like a snowmobile and free wheels down hill. It makes for an exciting ride doesn't it?

I'm not sure how it works.

[BobT]

A colleague suggested that it's possible that the secondary clutch is designed to close as rpm increases. When the wheeler begins to coast down hill, he suspects it should turn the secondary (the one on the transmission) fast enough to close up on the belt and this should provide the engine braking.

I suppose the year of my machine didn't have this available at least for my Kawi.

Bob

[jltimm]

Alot of early belt systems "freewheeled" All of the early polaris models did not have engine braking.Once this problem was realized, they started to put some engine braking on the belt system.

[BobT]

I stopped in at the dealership yesterday and they told me that engine braking was not available on my model until about 2001.

Mine is acting normally.

Thanks,

Bob